07 Refugee Check...

[solarbird]

Hi, this is solarbird - same as ij:Solarbird - not involved in any of the fandoms being targeted today, but no longer trusting the Six Apart version of LJ not to just start deleting data anymore. Since I use them in part as an offsite data store - I have separate accounts for that - that trust is pretty critical to me, so I'm afraid LJ just hit FAIL and I'm trying to figure out what to do. The odds aren't bad that I'll be echoing my LJ around to InsaneJournal and/or running the codebase at the Murknet and echoing there. And moving datastore activities off the LJ accounts I use for that, of course.

Really, no, I don't expect anything whatsoever to happen - particularly not to the data-store accounts, murknet and uplake - but offsite data storage (such as website data hosting for embedding purposes) requires trust. Most significantly, it requires trust that data just won't go away, particularly not on purpose. I've just built a third website around the idea that I could rely on LJ not being deeply stupid, and now LJ has demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to toss data overboard without warning, and try to at least obscure the fact that they did it. I genuinely can't imagine anything on either of those journals could ever trigger such a thing - but there it is, now, in the back of my brain. So I'm going to be looking for a mirror solution, in case 6A does anything particularly stupid, as seems to now be their wont.

(I can, just barely, imagine that kind of action for this LJ, in the back of my brain - mostly because what triggered the first round of this back in May was complaints from a theoconservative asshattery group. They hates me, oh they dooooo. 6A hasn't indicated in any way that they're that reactive, but, well, I can just barely imagine them becoming so. They have indicated that they'll blow off their own TOS and point to other TOS that isn't even posted when called on it. So it's hard to say.)

Anyway. So that's fun. We'll be poking at the LJ codebase for the Murknet this weekend. Yay. MurkJ, anyone?

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I considered loading the LJ code onto my webspace and poking about with it for the hell of it a few weeks ago, but then discovered that it requires a setting somewhere that Dreamhost won't change.

Mind you, I've got free webhosting elsewhere with a lovely bastard of an admin who likes standing up for various things, so I could set it up there, if I were really wanting to, but the process looks complicated enough that I haven't really decided to do that yet. :)

[smarier.livejournal.com]

So what happened today? I can't find any mention of this except in the message.

[solarbird]

It's another round of LJ v. FANDOM: FIGH-TO! with references to a TOS that doesn't exist, no-warning lifetime bans on accounts, all the usual crap. The most recent post on news has a lot of raging about it, but it's apparently the same thing as before, only they changed the LJ code so that banned accounts don't have a strikethrough anymore; they're just bold grey now and don't link. Yay! It's STUPID!

[banner.livejournal.com]

http://news.livejournal.com/102095.html?page=6#comments

Just scroll down, ya' can't miss it.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I would be very interested in participating in a fan-run version of LJ... even so far as to help you admin it, if you like. I probably know a few other folks who would be interested in moving who are also capable of helping.

What I'd really love to see is a distributed journalbase with distributed authentication... sort of the 21st century, blog-ized version of Usenet. But LJ on a fansite would be a good start. Go you guys, and let me know if you want/need help!

[(Anonymous)]

Once again with a signature line:

I don't have a big problem with a distinct rendering for suspended accounts; it quickly indicates that they're unavailable due to action by LJ's administration. The problem is that LJ's administration seems to think that such a distinction is (or will be) necessary.

-Smarry

[solarbird]

I don't mind a distinct rendering either; but the new rendering ditches the icon and makes it look like just any other bolded word, so it looks as thought it was never a username at all. Given that the old rendering was used in the previous kerfluffle as a rallying symbol, it have to give some credit to the idea that it was not coincidental. It's just kinda scummy.

But like I said, I disapprove of the action, but what I really disapprove of is the incompetent and arbitrary handling of the action. At least they're now stating outright that the rules and guidelines as posted - the ones you supposedly agree to in the TOS - don't really count and can be changed at any time. That's the kind of bullshit that's cost 6A my confidence.

Even better: they've apparently formed an ad hoc committee to review fan art and writings of adult nature, and plan to add a "report abuse" button to every post. I can't wait to hear the minutes from those meetings. They're inventing entirely new forms of FAIL with that one.

[wrog]

At least they're now stating outright that the rules and guidelines as posted - the ones you supposedly agree to in the TOS - don't really count and can be changed at any time.

so, I hate to ask this, but how are they blowing off their current TOS?

In fact, it looks to me like XIV.5 in their posted TOS allows them to do what they're doing.

Or am I missing something?

I'll grant they should probably just delete XIV.2 if they're not even going to try to give warnings anymore.

[solarbird]

That's the thing, it's hard to say. An assortment of people have quoted them talking about changes to the TOS and to policies since the May/June incident, but they haven't posted those changes - the official as of yesterday is still dated 2006. And several people have noted that they aren't following XIV.2 of the posted version, and even if the revisions/changes only are somehow magically not TOS, blowing off XIV.2 does kind of count as blowing it off.

Of course, now that one of the spokesstaffers (burr86) has started making fun of the complainants and implying they're all paedophiles anyway, I think we've got a pretty good idea how this is going to end up regardless.

[(Anonymous)]

Aha, I hadn't known that the suspended account tags lacked the LJ icon. That would make me wonder if they were being deliberately misleading.

-Smarry